Derek, he has created a character page on his website. It's all still in roleplay, so it's an interesting read.

http://finegamedesign.com/damiel/index.html

Try to only speak for yourself. I know many that would not want Dave back.

Let's have a look at the DA timeline! Thank you, Raen. :)
Dave: The Roleplaying Era
Mark: The Screw Everything Up Royally And Blame It On Dave Era
Dave: The "I'm Not Really Here, I'm just Bug-fixing." Era
Mahmud/M^2: The GM Who Actually Talks To The Players Era
Steve/and group: The 'We Actually Implement New Stuff' Era.

i dont wanna pay double money =(

Heaven forbid, we have a return to roleplaying in Dark Ages: Online Roleplaying. ;p

Sure, let's have more "Veltain Mines is now open."

I'd pay $20/mo for Dave to come back.

Don't give them any ideas. $20 for DA is ridiculous.

I wouldn't even buy reg codes in-game if they were $20 each.

: (

I wouldn't pay $20 for our current team.

Well, here's the main reasons I quit playing DarkAges:
-Community. Mostly [filtered] right now. I don't like the idea (and practice) of spending several days before I come across a person who can spell his own name properly. I know not much can be done about this, but if key parts of the game change, this would certainly change over time.
-Balance. This is minute to me as a whole, but still pretty important. My main character is a Pure Warrior, and I've poured tons of work into him. All these new places come out, or old places are changed. Bashers are pretty much obsolete now. Why take a basher or two when a prizard can solo? It just bugs me. This wouldn't be an issue at all if something like warming (sans all the jumping-through-hoops to use it) was implemented.
-Poor AI design. I don't think there's many people who see this issue as clearly as I do, but in a lot of (especially newer) areas, the AI used in other monsters is retarded at best. There's a fine line between challenging and annoying. Creatures that spam dion and skull you in one hit are the latter. I'm not saying there shouldn't be redonkulously hard monsters, but they should still be killable without having to resort using bugs to our advantage, like ungrouping because the Captain steals everyone's mana. That's just not how in-game combat should be done.
-Lack of story integration. The day client 5 was released, the story was no longer included in the client. This seems like a minor drawback, but it seems significant to me. Kru doesn't try in the slightest to integrate the story into the game. Sure, a new event will happen and they'll whip up some half-assed in-character explanation, but it's hardly part of the story. It just seems like the history should be more...visible? And the present/future of the game should be more strongly tied in with it. True, part of this is the current playerbase for not knowing jack [filtered] about Temuair, but like I said, changes in the game would ultimately lead to changes in the playerbase.

In any case, it's good to see you back, Dave. Personally, I'd really like to see you working with Kru, if only to have someone working full-time on DarkAges with some programming knowledge. Steven, I'm looking at you.

No.

Not that I play any more, but no.

No.

If it was Dave who implemented Fas, the current subbing system and took Cradh/Dall/Suain/Puinsein/Breisleich from Wizards and gave them to Priests then it's probably best he sticks to tabletop games.

He didn't want wizards to be as powerful as they are in Nexus.
Overkill might be an understatement, though.

LOL @ YOUR QUOTE PIC

I'd gladly pay if double if there was real phone support and they listened to players and had 2-4 hour response times on all tickets. With the increased revenue maybe DA would be better as it would allow for better staffing needs and ultimately better support and faster turnaround on problems and developmental bugs.

I want Dave back because he listened to players. He has a mathematical way of dealing with problems and understands the business well. I am by no means an advocate for roleplay, but I like it. I also like customer service and giving money for services to companies who considder their customers' ideas and satisfaction above all else. KRU simply does not have resources now to do this. It's a downward spiral and it will only get worse. Only way I see them ever getting out of their slump is to charge more...

The price of everything else in the world goes up every year, why should DA be any different? They can't expect to be in bussines in 10 years if they won't up the prices. It's silly to think that DA will always cost $9.95. Bandwidth prices rise, hardware prices rise, employee wages rise, and cost of living increases every year affect inflation. Each year businesses must account for all kinds of new and unexpected expenses that they did not need to account for the year before. You can't, with a sane mind, think that KRU will be in business very long if they don't up the prices. If you think big macs and twinkies are going to be the same price in 10 year you are sorely mistaken. Good with ecconomics classes if you believe otherwise...


They are already losing customers because their service stinks, or at least is perceived to stink. Perception is everything! Perceptions cost money and that is something KRU won't have if they keep charging the same rates.

But yeah, Dave is the man. nuff said...

As far as the pricing thing goes, I highly doubt the "extra service" would be worth it when you add everything up. Look at the price of WoW and the way it's developed/serviced. When a value meal costs me $10 instead of $5, I'll be ready to pay a bit more for DA, certainly not "double" however. A price gouge at this point in the game wouldn't be smart for them at all. You can't just "judge" the economy and say "we're going to raise our prices xx amount" and expect your business to succeed. Chances are you'd be lucky to find 10% of the playerbase that would support something like that, maybe 20% who'd actually pay it. It'd effectively kill DA.

It won't happen overnight, but it will happen... Hell I bet damn near every morrior would pay near to double if warming came back and they all could get eclipses. If they offer people pretty shiney things, they will pay. It's like tricking your dog with bacon to get into the car so you can take him to the vet. They always know when they are going, but will always get in for baccon.

My point is that you wouldn't mind paying more if KRU sugar coated the price hike. They can dazzle us with pretty pretty lights and candy bars and people would pay. It happenes every single day in hundreds of different markets around the world for thousands of different products. Well done marketing is key to success.

(E.X. "Next month we will be increasing the cost of our services. The price will go up $5.00. For all customers who renew with us durring the next 3 months, we will give all your characters a 3k HP bonus" - KRU)

Lots of players would bite on that, hell I probably would, but then I also have no intentions of quitting DA any time soon.

Anyway, to me extra service would be worth a price increase. To you, maybe not; but I can gaurantee that if you wanted to continue to play DA in the least, there would be something they could do to make you feel good about a price increase.

Wow. You're not talking about paying for service at all, you're talking about paying for in-game bonuses. Good job dodging the issue.

Regardless of how many people could possibly be "tricked" by something like this, it wouldn't last. Essentially, you'd still be playing the same game and the players would be left wondering why they were paying more for something they paid less for in the past when they were getting the same experience out of it.

To be specific, I also know people who would pay to keep "warming" out of the game as it was a bug in the first place.

The day anyone pays more than $10 a month for DA is the day they can claim to be financially incompetant. You're forgetting that different countries have different currency exchange rates and that even in america most people can only afford one account.

You want better customer service? Don't play an MMOG. You'll find the same complaints no matter where you go.

Yep!

The basic business model with MMORPGs is long term. They hope they make more money in 20 years of providing virtualy the same service at the same price, then they initialy spend developing the product. One of only a few markets that can get away with this. Not many other business function like this. Most business models that relly on product or service offerings are only able to increase price as they improve the product and thus the value to the customer.

I think the case of any computer game, the model is to hope you make back more money then it cost you to develop the game. DA can still attract new players, maybe not at the rate that WoW does, but I still find the amount of new DA players impressive considdering all things.

Anyway, we are WAAAAYYYyyyy off topic...

My original reason for piping up was to say, Yay for Dave, and that I think he was a good influence to DA. Those who say otherwise are of course entitled to their opinions....

But with any technology, you will see price DECREASE over time (same with fashion, pharmacy...). Games will go obsolete, computer from 2 years ago won't worth a damn today. There is no "long term" for tech, everything is short term...

That's the reason they hold events like eulogy and redemp right around when kids are taking final exams, and getting new areas up to keep the upper player base, because sooner and later those areas will go old, and players will go away if you don't have something new.

As I said.... "Yay for Dave"

Actually, Eulogy, Redemption, and Adoration take place around American holidays which usually carry a prolonged break for students. It's Thanksgiving, Easter, and Fourth of July, respectively. They were put with each holiday because it matches up with 8 deochs or something like that. Plus, with extended weekends, whole weeks off, or even an entire summer off, this allows the player more time to get back into the game. But I think the increased playtime due to a decrease in schoolwork is just a coincedence.

Also, Leos's sig > all sigs. It's so stupid it's brilliant.

If they needed to make more money in order to improve the game (which is bull[filtered] I think considering all the [filtered]ty, waste of time updates they've done in the past), they could come up with more side features similar to the restoration of purged characters. For example, they could charge for character resets if you [filtered] up your stat plan or something. Another idea would be a $12 a month fee for a 7-character account. Unfortunately, their idea department seems to be their main source of trouble and I have yet to see them implement anything suggested by a player (unless character restoration was). And yeah, that's one fine sig.

Okay seriously.. how many of you even actually played when Dave was a GM the first time? Those of you that want him back clearly didn't, or you have a really terrible memory.

Hell, I'd go for that. They could also charge a fee that would let you take one character from one of your other accounts and add it to your main account. As long as you could prove it was yours, I don't see a problem. There may be some programming thing I'm not aware of, but...

The sig is from 4chan.

When Dave was GM, you could speedhack, packet, character share, macro, anything. Just when it came to interfering with politics and roleplaying, he exiled you from both towns!

so now you can speedhack, packet, share, macro and screw up with politics, selling political positions, pardons and exiles or abusing the law with siblings?
that's a tough decision, what do I prefer?

ps: As I said before, I don't know Dave and I'm not supporting him, just showing the difference between them.

'Packeting' is only possible now with some knowledge or atleast aptitude, as the server has been made much more secure (post-dave). Sharing is now blocked for, when they bother to check for it, whereas Dave never blocked for it. We now have rangers to discourage macroing (also a post-Dave idea). You can no longer take over a town using politics as you could when Dave was GM, even when 'clout farming' became widespread. Not all of these things were Dave's fault, of course, but they were major problems during his reign and only improved upon when new game managers were hired. If you want to bring back old GM's, how about Mark, who didn't update [filtered], but would actually work on bugs and block for speed use? Or M^2 who was actually good at his job and could pull off reasonably interesting updates? I think we can all agree the current DA Team is obviously lacking, but I'm not going to soak my chair at the mention of Dave Kennerly because he was nothing special in a long line of crappy manager's.

You can speedhack, you can macro, you can share, but you can't packet. We get updates, we get feedback. During the time Dave was GM, the old players were already promised guild castles, underwater area and the Warrior Training Grounds. I admit that I'm glad to see him back, because he used to involve his character with the playerbase, rather than hiding and Chadul's Kiss spam on everybody. The great thing about him is that he created a lot of quests that people still do to this day, you can find the list of them on his website. They all have a story behind them and they're all in character.

It was a really difficult choice between rebalancing and bugfixing, as both are so sorely needed. I went with game balancing though, because after my time in wow, I've come to realize how important balance is, and how badly it is lacking in DA.

I win. And I typed more too!

but 8 deoch is a year.

Thanksgiving maybe the longest vacation for the fall semester, but Easter is definitely NOT the longest break for the spring semester -- Spring Break is -- many institutions hardly have any break over Easter.

I've known ppl who would play MMORPGs through the semesters, then stop on the months of November and April to really cram study then take finals exams in December and May.

- The game really needs to get back to the story. But sadly at this point, role play has been so beyond sucked dry from the game. Likely an rp update in interface/story/quests/ect really wouldn't make the "majority" of the current darkages happy (since Rp'ers have all left to other games.)
- Class balance likely will never exist, as it never exists in any big MMOs. There is always someone out there that feels their class is underpowered, or that so-and-so's class is overpowered (And on that note: I do feel rogues are pretty much pointless outside of chaos, and pures are rotten. But that's just because that was my main :p.) But, a little work to make some classes a little better would be very tasty.
- Bug fixes are always an issue, and I'd guess are always being worked on.
- New items/hunting places/pets/ect. are always being added, which is great and all -- However, there hasn't been any real useful content for those who haven't yet put in their 4,587,634 hours of AB hunting. There was SOME stuff added, which I'd be greatful about.. if I had dedicated 20 hours of my day to the sole purpose of hunting ability points. It'd be nice to get a little something new for those of us that can't do the long AB hunts anymore (yay for college + jobby job.)

Keep: Events. If role play was actually more common in this game once again, and not just by the last sparked few left within Temuair who struggle to keep it alive (<3 Naze) -- I'd likely cough up the bucks and come back. But it would take COMMON events, not just a random event and then months of nothing. Also, not just a -- "Uhhh... Oren Ball time!" This game needs to be sparked again. Look at how active NexusTK is on a global Rp level. THAT's what I miss about DA, and THAT's why the most of the people I know left this game. It wasn't bugs, or class balance, but the fact that the library section on the darkages website has been getting fewer and fewer hits as time goes on.. and the updates for the game have been filled with more and more hunting places outside of 80% of our reach, and items that we can't use due to the 15+ AB level tied with them. It makes the game seem like it's pointed more toward the "N = N +1" as Nazed noted, and not the rich story that it once had -- deep in its cob webbed tomb.

Give up: A new piece of armor or weapon. We've seen a lot of updates in this area, and I'd rather see updates in other places than any more updates here.

PS: Pardon my bitterness. But the game really went downhill after things went down with you, Dave :p. But -- World of Warcraft is nice.

hahah, thats exactly what I was thinking! :P I never had anything against the guy, but it seemed like SO MANY people did o.O and now everyone wants him back? hah
sil

The only thing Dave did good was open the arena before leaving. The only good 'things' Mark ever did was block speedhackers and not update the game. M^2 in his short time showed up every other GM we've ever had. Oh well!

They need to just sack themselves and hand over DA to the creators of runescape.


i got bored:

Runescape is terrible.

Seems to me like they have their [filtered] together though. My friend is a mod on the game. Although I hate it, it seems fairly well updated and maintained.

Lies. You've played it and loved it i can tell.

This thread is so a 'the grass is greener' thread.

I have blue grass!

Is your Neck Red by chance?

We should all get together and make our prefect Dark ages! or just keep looking for something like it :(

Id like to play some old dark ages agian til then DA just really isn't my thing... no time.. damn job